Cagegate

Does America break up families, keep kids in cages, and abuse illegal immigrants? Obviously, not enough or there would be far fewer illegal immigrants. (They're far more looped into the risks than the average Joe). The facts are this is rare, temporary, this has been done forever (and under the Obama and Clinton administrations), and the idea that criminals shouldn't be separated from their kids is absurd. Under the Democrats reasoning, for domestic crime, it is fine to separate families. But for foreign invaders and perpetrators should get special exceptions. But a nation without laws is no longer a nation. And a media that omits context and biases their stories, like NYT and NYMag did on this one, are no longer journalists.

Contents

History

In 1997, the federal government made an agreement in a case called the Flores Settlement (part of the Reno v. Flores case), not to keep unaccompanied illegal immigrant children in custody beyond twenty days. This got extended to accompanied minors by the 9th circuit, which ruled that the government either had to release whole families, or that the government had to separate parents from children. [1].

Immigrants who come to points of entry and seek asylum aren’t arrested: they’re processed through ICE, and their children stay with them.

Only illegal immigrants who cross the border illegally (and don't declare asylum until after they are caught) are treated as criminals.

Even there, if they choose deportation, they aren’t separated from their kids....

Only if they choose to apply for asylum (after getting caught illegally entering the country), AND they stay in the country longer than 20 days, then their kids have to be removed because of the 9th circuit ruling.

And why would they be here longer than 20 days? Because most asylum claims are fraudulent... and if you lie during the asylum interview (under oath), then that lie is a felony offense. But it can take a while to investigate. Since they will be in jail for a year or more, keeping children with them is simply not an option.

There's a real irony that Democrats have a huge problem with George Papadopoulos supposedly lying under oath (by making a minor and irrelevant mistake), yet have no problem when foreign nationals lying in clear violation of federal law (and commit a felony for personal benefit). Double standards much?

Things haven't gotten worse under Obama, they peaked in 2014, when Democrats were waiving their hands and saying, "nothing to see here, go away". The facts are there are waves. The wave under an open-border administration is bigger than under someone claiming you will be arrested and deported.

The one thing that happened was Stephen Miller and John Kelly got quoted/misquoted as saying, "that the administration was separating kids from parents as a sort of deterrent". Whether those were the exact words, or just the words the media put in their mouth, anyone with a lick of sense knows that the deterrent is the arrest and deportation, not separating children from parents. But either way, an executive that doesn't enforce the law on the books, is not following his Constitutional Oath. Which is something Obama and Clinton did happily, but Trump has more ethics.

There was so much FakeNews about this topic, that I had to break it into a whole other article:

This FakeNews fiasco was the fallacy that Trump's new immigration policy was breaking up families and putting kids in cages. The omitted reality was criminals (border jumpers) have always had the kids separated from the adults, as you aren't sure who are parents, and detaining both in the same place risks harm to children. The media even used faked propaganda images from Obama era to sell it.
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Democrats did this

So this wasn't a Trump administration invention.... those claiming this is a Trump policy, or new, are either fools or liars. This was the consequences of Democrats refusing to do more for border protection, and the 9th Circuit tying the hands of the INS. But remember, if Democrats had done what they promised in 1987 (and many times since), and helped seal the border, instead of obstructing those efforts, then this would be a non-fight, and kids would not be getting separated from their families. Of course most Democrats are biologically incapable of admitting truths or mistakes by their side, so this will only piss them off (like most facts do). But if you care about the facts, you repeat them, even when they're unpopular.

America can not take the influx of people that would come here if they could. Period. Fact. The only question is should we reward illegal line-jumping (the Democrats plan), or should we reward those that follow the rules by making those cutting in line, wait their turn at least (the Republicans plan)? That's fundamentally what this fight is about. That and short versus long term thinking. Should we be compassionate in the short term or long term. (Help kids now, and get more of them crossing the border and being exploited. Or enforcing our border laws, discouraging illegal coyote's and human trafficking). It helps to remember the basics:

The gross majority of the policies and laws we have today were passed by Democrats, for Democrats, and to appease their Union allies. Democrats want to created large centralized bureaucracies and quotas, and make it hard to get in legally.... then they also want to reward people that subvert those laws and processes.

Obama's proposed amnesty, signals with sanctuary cities, DACA, and policies regarding "catch and release" (all kids that come here can be released to any that ask, as long as they promise to come back for a court date -- with 80-90%+ being non-compliant) all magnified the problem and increased our illegal alien population by 2.5 million during his term.

Illegal entries are up 160% YoY because of the lure of DACA and immigration reform -- and according to CBP (Customs and Border Protection), DACA was first announced, from 2012-2014 this caused an upsurge of 200% in illegal entries. And according to HHS, since 2012 the number of unaccompanied minor illegal immigrants has over tripled (from 13,000 to 41,000/year).

The vast majority of kids that are in the facilities are unaccompanied minors (meaning they were separated from their families before coming here, not afterwards).

Homeland Security Chief Kirstjen Nielsen, explained scale and scope, "since 1975 the U.S. has let in 3 Million Refugees, and each year accepts nearly 2/3rd of all settles refugees in the entire world. More than the rest of the world combined." So any country that criticizes us, is doing less than we are. (Most even adjusted for population).

The reason Trump has to address this, is because of the failure of Democrats policies. And there's a reason that no democrat has offered a solution for this problem: because they don't have any, they want to distract with sob stories. But I ask them things like, "Do you think illegals are stupid? Y/N". If Y, then you're probably racist. If N, then you know they're smart enough to exploit holes in the system. And there's no doubt putting an exception that says, "here's the immigration laws, unless you bring in kids"... would be a glaring hole that would be exploited. In fact it was being exploited, widely. And catch-and-release was resulting in millions disappearing in our border, and breaking the law.

You can't have an immigration law that says "unless you bring in kids".... that would be exactly as stupid as saying, "rape is against the law, unless you make your kids watch". If it's not good enough to be against the law, then fix the law. If it is against the law, then it's against the law, whether your kids are with you or not.

Conclusion

In the end, the real question is do you agree that there should be consequences for breaking the law? Y/N

If N, then you're an idiot that can be discounted, because a country without laws is not a country anyone wants to live in.

If Y, then keeping kids separate from potential felons in an adult prison, is for their own safety and is common sense. And that's a small price to pay for people seeking asylum as long as the kids are cared for, and the process is reasonable.

In the end, this debate gets to the core differences between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats are the “Why can’t we only eat candy?”, kids in a candy-store party (as long as someone else is paying for the candy). They are demonstrating short-term thinking and vilifying any authority who dares to imply that punishing lawbreakers is better than the alternative. Republicans are being the long-term thinking Daddy party, and saying, "because it's bad for you" and trying to prevent more catastrophe and abuse of minorities, but that forces us to allow kids to be separated from their parents and vet which parents are honest, which families are real or not, and not reward everyone who users their kids as human shields to circumvent immigration law... exactly like happened under Democrat administrations, when no Democrats seemed to care about this issue.

If you want to argue about whether the kids are being properly cared for, or whether the process is fast enough? Fine. Make that case, and I might agree with you. But that's not the argument most are making. They're arguing that a nation should have no right to imprison lawbreakers, or protect kids by not locking them up with their felon parents (and whoever was netted with them). And that's just stupid and racist. It pretends that illegal immigrants are too stupid to use kids as pawns (just like the Democrats do), but evidence shows they already are. [2] Democrats are either too stupid to understand that they are, or they're dishonest and using them as pawns to get what they want without admitting it: open borders. Face it, if the Democrats cared, they would have addressed this when they had super-majorities in all the houses back in 2009... instead this problem grew under Obama, and they were silent. The facilities being used are the same facilities Obama used (and the Democrats had no problem with), only they're less crowded and better managed now. It only became an issue when Republicans took the Presidency.

The legislature can fix this law at any time. The Democrats have been obstructing those chances: cries of Holocaust or Internment camps and other absurdities, can't help. They can only polarize the informed against the Democrats, and those lies can only work against fixing the solution. Which is likely what the Democrats want. They want a campaign issue for 2018, and lies pretending this is a new problem, Trump's fault, and other exaggerations is their ways to exploit children as political pawns to win an election. If the Democrats really cared, they wouldn't throw out all this invective, they'd come to the table and negotiate something that Republicans would happily fix. Instead Schumer and Pelosi are blocking offers to resolve it (they want to make it hard to fix). If the Democrats worked to fix it, they couldn't get elected by finger-pointing and blaming the Republicans for the problem.